Shared Parenting
Shared Parenting
This chapter shows that caring for children in all social ranks extended beyond mothers and fathers to resident and non‐resident family, and unrelated members of the ‘household‐family’. This facilitated the trend for concentrated intimacy between parents and children by distributing the burden of childcare. Grandparents took a major role, providing care for grandchildren during parental absence, spousal conflict, or ill‐health. Their help included provision, advice, and instruction. Aunts and uncles were also integral to the division of the labours of childcare. As well as offering short term help, some acted as surrogate parents; though for aunts this was often training for motherhood rather than a substitute. Parents frequently turned to paid servants and nurses for childcare. Indispensible and remembered by memoirists with affection, they are all too often relegated to the margins of accounts of parenting.
Keywords: childcare, parenting, parents, household‐family, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nurses, servants, substitute parents
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